St. Ignatius of Loyola

Who they were

Ignatius was a Basque courtier and soldier, vain about his hair, his clothes and his courage, until a French cannonball shattered his leg at Pamplona in 1521. Recovering in a castle with nothing to read but a life of Christ and lives of the saints, he noticed something that became the foundation of his life's work: daydreams of glory left him dry afterwards, while thoughts of following Christ left a peace that stayed. Learning to read those interior movements, consolation and desolation, became the Spiritual Exercises, still the Church's most used tool for making major decisions. He limped to a cave at Manresa, then to school benches beside boys half his age, and eventually founded the Society of Jesus, which he ran from a desk in Rome while it spread across the world. He was canonized in 1622.

Why people turn to St. Ignatius of Loyola

Anyone facing a decision that will not resolve: a vocation, a marriage, a career, a move. Discernment is his specialty in the most literal sense, because he wrote the method.

How to ask their intercession

Bring the actual decision. Ask his prayers for clarity about which option, honestly imagined, leaves peace behind rather than noise, and give it more than one rosary.